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If the World Ends Today, Please Disregard this Post

After three major wind, rain, hail, snow and thunderstorms back to back, it’s a beautiful morning out here now. But according to the Mayan Calendar, the world is going to end sometime today, so there’s no sense appreciating or enjoying it.

The early Mayans believed December 21, 2012 was significant and symbolic, basically because all life on Earth will end. Their understanding of astronomy was uncanny, but whoever made their end-times prediction may have had their head too high in the clouds. Though they were spot on in their perception that on this day the Earth would be at its farthest point from the sun in our planet’s wobbly 20,000 year rotation, their end-times scenario gets a bit wobbly in itself. It apparently has something to do with the widening of a gap in the Milky Way, which supposedly will allow evil to cross the vast void of space (like something out of a bad Superman movie) to infest our planet.

But as much as we’d like to blame some otherworldly force, to discover the true nature of evil, we don’t need the Hubble telescope; one needs only a hand mirror or a pocket compact. Evil takes human form when a complete lack of compassion and empathy combines with the will to do harm to others; when one’s self-interest is held so far above another’s so as to render said other a mere object.

If I were to listen to a primordial people who propped up giant stones, dabbled in human sacrifice and were astronomically far ahead of their time, I might as well follow my own ancestors, the ancient Celts and their spiritual leaders, the Druids. They too thought December 21st was significant, but only because it’s the Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year.

Rather than being a dark and dismal day, it’s a time for rejoicing the gradual return of light to the hemisphere that, since the Summer Solstice, has been tilting away from the Sun. Though winter is just getting started (much to the joy of skiers, like myself), from here on in the days will be getting slightly longer and the nights shorter (for six months, anyway).

So, unless the Mayans were right and that’s all she wrote, here’s wishing you a Happy Solstice!!